


The Sky Is A Big Old Place

by loveandpride1895



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Aliens, Angst, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Humour, I hope, M/M, dan is an alien
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-04
Updated: 2018-02-19
Packaged: 2019-03-13 18:58:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 20,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13576920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loveandpride1895/pseuds/loveandpride1895
Summary: @&//:-£, is not very helpful to put on bank statements, which is apparently something you need to worry about on Earth. So They (note the capital ‘T’, which is in itself a rough translation for ‘this is something notable and maybe sinister, but withhold judgement for now, dear reader’) ran it through translators, lined it up with censuses, prodded and pulled at the characters until it resembled something like a name. They prodded it a bit more for good measure and ended up with what They hoped was a nice, inconspicuous ‘Earth’ name.@&//:-£ became Daniel James Howell.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, dear readers! This is largely born of a love for Matt Haig's 'The Humans,' which rather revolutionised my world. It rather writes itself, and I have had immense fun. Updates should be semi-regular, as it is mostly written, but I tear my hair out editing quite often, so no promises! 
> 
> Thanks for popping in, and reviews would be much appreciated. 
> 
> Dan and Phil are merely characters in this, and nothing I write about their relationship is speculation. 
> 
> Hope you have fun!

They wanted to know more about humans, that was the long and short of it. They were beings who thrived on knowledge and knowing and having more knowledge and knowing more things than everyone else in the universe. 

Humans had hidden away in a quiet corner of the universe for far too long, and that was unacceptable. So They began a programme. 

The programme consisted of a rigorous selection process, in which the first person They saw walking down the road was plucked from it and bundled into Their ship. After that, there was a little brainwashing (alright, a complete hollowing out. But it didn't hurt or anything. They weren't savages) and then it was a case of education. They taught @&//:-£ everything they’d learnt from observation of human kind (ah, the Aurora Borealis. So pretty, so useful) and then they gave it a body. 

It was a male body, which was apparently a significant distinction to make in human society. It was intended to appear to have been on Earth for twenty-six years. It was taller than average, it had brown hair with a tendency to curl, and They even went to the expense of little holes in the ears. They were sticklers for detail indeed. 

They put a chip in his brain that would log all of his experiences, which They could communicate with him via if the need to do so arose. They also put a chip in his neck that if he pushed in just the correct manner would take him home. It was worth noting, however that this was for extreme emergencies only, because They would be very very angry if their mission were terminated prematurely. Probably worth sticking it out. 

They dressed him and stuck a wad of paper in his pocket that would apparently be useful. 

After one hundred and twenty five days, @&//:-£ was loaded into a ship, and and told to buckle up. 

And so it began. 

***

@&//:-£, is not very helpful to put on bank statements, which is apparently something you need to worry about on Earth. So They (note the capital ‘T’, which is in itself a rough translation for ‘this is something notable and maybe sinister, but withhold judgement for now, dear reader’) ran it through translators, lined it up with censuses, prodded and pulled at the characters until it resembled something like a name. They prodded it a bit more for good measure and ended up with what They hoped was a nice, inconspicuous ‘Earth’ name. 

@&//:-£ became Daniel James Howell. 

***

Daniel James Howell thought that Daniel James Howell was rather a mouthful, so when on Human Training Day number one, They told him that humans often shorten their names, he was rather pleased. He decided that he would try his very best to implore people on Earth to call him ‘Dan.’ He left Human Training Day number one feeling rather optimistic.

By Human Training Day number one hundred and twenty five, he was feeling rather less optimistic. He had learnt a great many more things about humans. 

Dan had learnt that humans spent a lot of time worrying about numbers, but numbers in different places mean different things. For example, for humans, a little number on a set of scales is a good thing, and a big number in a bank account is a good thing. He wondered why they couldn’t make up their minds. 

Dan had learnt that humans spent a lot of time wondering what to do with a big dot on top of a little dash that they’d invented called ‘the semi-colon.’ Nobody could quite seem to decide what to do with it. He wondered why they didn’t just abandon it. 

Dan had learnt that humans spent a lot of time worrying about words. A lot of people spent their time wondering how to put words together so that they don’t offend people, but some seemed to be concerned with doing the opposite. Sometimes, people who fit into the latter category were allowed to run countries. He thought this was a bit of a silly idea.

Dan had learnt that humans had a long history of intolerance and fighting, and that some people were reluctant to leave that behind. 

Dan had learnt that humans were filling their oceans with plastic and burning up the layer that protects them from the sun. 

Dan had learnt that humans were complicated, complicated things.

He was rather nervous for his journey to Earth. 

***

The ship didn’t land, so much as vaguely hover over an empty space. One of Them gave him a gentle nudge out of the door, and then he was on his own. 

Daniel James Howell was a human being navigating his way through life on Earth. 

He took a steadying breath in, opened his eyes, and felt every squared centimetre of breathe he’d carefully gathered into his lungs immediately leave them. 

Wow.

They’d gone over the basics of biology and ecology during days ten, eleven and twelve of Human Training, but in all the learning about humans, he’d forgotten just how different Earth was to... everything.

On his planet, the grass was golden and the sky was purple, and the clouds were little multicoloured gatherings of dust. 

On Earth, the grass was still grass, and the sky was still the sky, and the clouds were still clouds, but they were also so... not. 

The disorientation made him feel a little lightheaded, and he mentally vexed human biology for that little inconvenient nuance. 

He had the sudden realisation that he had no idea what he was doing. So he started to walk. 

Walking... Now that was a funny old thing. He'd walked in his old body, of course, but human legs... They were odd. There were two main bits, and then a bit on the end that flopped around and he could see no real purpose to. On the end of that floppy bit were five protrusions that seemed to him to make even less sense, especially when humans went to such special effort to hide them.

Yes, that's another thing. 

Clothes. He was wearing a grey t-shirt, and grey tracksuit bottoms, and a pair of grey trainers and he just couldn't understand it. Why clothes? And why different clothes for different people, and why were some clothes good and some clothes bad, and why did some clothes have to go with other clothes before they could go outside and... Why? 

When he'd asked that on multitudes of occasions during Human Training, he'd become accustomed to the sound of a couple of words. Those words were, as a rough translation, ‘Just, Because.' Quite often they were coupled with, as a rough translation, 'Now, shut up.' 

He was fairly sure he'd mastered the walking thing, but there was lingering doubt at the back of his mind. He'd spent hours attempting to emulate the strides of the human They'd repeatedly shown him on the video helpfully labelled, 'walking.' But he'd never walked side by side with another human, and there was a significant chance that he'd somehow be doing it wrong. But he carried on, because there was very little else he could do. Well... He could lie down on the floor and stay there, but a thing that humans do after a while is starve, and he wasn't all that keen to do that.

At some point, the surface he was walking on changed from being grass to being concrete. That indicated to him that other humans were near. Other humans who are strange and complicated and hate saying what they mean, and like insulting each other, and don't learn from their mistakes and... Have a lot of good qualities too. 

Yes. 

He was sure he'd find some. 

His action plan when on Earth was to withhold judgement in every way possible, until he could adapt. He'd take everything everyone said at face value, unless he found reason to do otherwise. He'd assume the best. He'd become human for a little while, moulded by whatever it was he saw. He'd be fine. 

His optimism maintained for the few seconds it took until a human... Actually appeared. 

A female human, just below his shoulder height, breezing past him in a waft of strawberry that went right up his nose, then disappearing. Off into a veritable swarm of other humans. That was suddenly swarming around him. 

Where the hell had they come from? Did they have some... Materialising quality that had been somehow emitted from Training? 

They were just everywhere, breathing and talking and walking and huffing and coughing and spluttering and laughing and sighing. They all seemed determined to be right in Dan's face, barrelling into him and knocking him from side to side. 

He could barely breathe, which wasn't good for humans. 

He utilised the (apparently disproportionately to the rest of humanity, if this cross section was to be believed) long arms he'd been given and stuck them out to the sides, pushing his way through the crowd until there was a parting. He staggered over to a bench, and sunk down onto it. He spent a few moments catching his breathe, hand clawing at his throat, and pitiful gasps coming out of his mouth. 

Then he did something apparently very human indeed. He pulled his knees up under his chin, and he started to cry. When he'd first learnt about crying, he'd thought it had made perfect sense. Good idea, nice logical humans. If sadness builds up inside you, put it in solution and then get rid of it. But then he learnt that there isn't any actual sadness in tears, because sadness isn't an actual physical thing. Sadness is a feeling, and crying is only a reaction to that feeling. It is apparently a reaction marked down as, 'not exactly logical, but certainly healthy.' 

It didn't feel very healthy when it was happening. It was making his chest hurt, and his eyes sting, and his nose feel like the skin was peeling off it. He wished he could stop, but now that it had started, it had started for good. Human bodies are very hard to control. And the swarm was still there, still making their noises and doing their pushing, and they weren't all that far away, and they could engulf him again at any time, at literally any time because this was his life now, and he had nowhere to go, and he didn't know what he was doing and-

"Hey, are you okay?" 

There was a voice. A male human voice. He opened his eyes quickly, and they darted upwards. 

Yep, the voice was talking to him. 

It belonged to a pale human male, with black hair and eyes that were a colour it was difficult to put a finger on. He was holding a large blue shopping bag. His face was clouded with concern, and his posture was dipped in a way that suggested that he wanted to crouch a little closer, but was reluctant to do so. 

Dan tried to reply, but found the words bubbling around the mucus in his throat.

"Yeah, you're right, that was a bit of a stupid question."

Dan blinked. 

The man looked from side to side, looking rather like a startled rabbit, then perched beside him. Then, he started to rifle through the bag. Dan began to lower his knees slowly. 

"I've got a cookie somewhere, they always cheer me up."

Dan couldn't quite remember what a cookie was, but remembered a social rule about never accepting something from strangers. It might have been cookies. Or drugs. Cookies or drugs. He cleared his throat just in case. First words were considered very important on earth. His were:

"It's fine. I don't want a cookie, thank you."

Unique, he was almost certain. 

"Oh...okay. How can I help then, is there anyone I can call?’

'Not without a very large satellite dish and an intergalactic dictionary, my dear boy,' he nearly said. 

"...no," he settled with. 

"Or, I could walk you home. Or... Drive you home. Where's home?" 

"...not...here." 

The man narrowed his eyes in inquisitive concern.

"Okay... Where are you staying then?" 

He thought for a moment. 

"Nowhere yet. I plan to find a hotel." 

"Oh. Oh!" The man was giving him a look that was somewhere between startled horror and pity. Dan had studied both 'startled horror' and 'pity' on day fifty four of Human Training, but he'd never seen an expression that was neither and both before. It was fascinating. "Is that why you were crying? Have you fallen out with someone at home, can you not go back or..."

He trailed off, but his mouth stayed slightly ajar. 

'Fallen out with' did not mean an actual fall, but an argument that resulted in hostility. He'd learnt this and many other idioms during days nineteen through to twenty six, in which he'd had digitally affixed to his brain the English language. There had been talk of giving him German and French too, but that would have meant sacrificing the mental capacity to excrete waste, which was apparently very important. He'd find out, he supposed. 

"No. Nothing like that." 

"Okay... Erm... I'm not really sure how to help. Are you sure about the cookie?"

"Yes thank you." 

The man shuffled backwards on the bench slightly, and put his thumb to his lips. The centre of his forehead creased into a little line, stayed that way for a moment, then unfolded as he began to speak. 

"Come home with me, just for now. Please. I don't like the idea of leaving you when you've been crying, at least not until I know how to help." 

Red lights were flashing in Dan's mind. Social convention states that taking a stranger into your home is A Thing Humans Don't Normally Do. And being taken into a stranger's home is A Thing Humans Should Be Wary Of Doing. But that state of mind conflicted with his 'face value' mission, and what was he there to do but learn and make mistakes. 

"That's very kind. Thank you." 

The man smiled, but it was a smile that wasn't quite happy. It was... Hesitantly hopeful. More coexisting emotions. This was going to be one hell of a day for learning. 

"Great! Oh god, I don't even know your... What's your name?"

"It's Daniel James Howell, but I like to shorten it to Dan." 

The man smiled again, and this time it was a little purer. Tinged with... Was that amusement?

"I'm Philip Micheal Lester. Shortened to Phil."


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! Thank for coming back! Or... Welcome, if this is your first time. I'm having rather a lot of fun with this and I hope that comes across. 
> 
> Comments would be much appreciated!

Phil's home wasn't very far away, so they walked. It was in relative silence, save for the shuffling of Dan's feet as he dragged them along the pavement. He was still getting used to this walking lark. 

Twice, his toes got caught between the paving slabs, and the second time he nearly fell. He felt blood rush to his cheeks as Phil caught his forearm, and mentally ticked a box of 'embarrassment experienced.' Phil simply smiled and said, "Don't worry. I never know what to do with my limbs either." 

Dan felt that he should break the silence, (he was certain there was some rule about mentioning the weather) but Phil wasn't doing it either, so perhaps walking in silence was socially acceptable. Alternatively, Phil's mind was elsewhere. He kept casting glances in Dan's direction and furrowing his eyebrows when he thought he wasn't looking. Perhaps he was trying to work out his story. Which was, ironically, exactly what Dan was trying to do. 

Who the hell was he going to invent for himself?

After around fifteen minutes, they turned a corner down a little street. It was narrow, with tall, brown houses and lots of windows. A couple of cars lined the road, but not nearly enough for the number of houses. Phil stopped outside a green door, and gestured to it with one hand. 

"This is... My house," he said, voice inflicting awkwardly at the end. Dan smiled flatly and nodded. Phil's keys bore a keyring of what looked like a small breed of dog, and jangled when he wiggled them in the lock. 

Dan followed him into a narrow hallway, so narrow in fact that Phil had to reach around and press against him to close and lock the door behind him. Then, he awkwardly shuffled back to his position in the front, and made for the stairs. He gestured for Dan to follow him, (stairs were certainly interesting. He tripped three times in the space of thirteen steps, but in actual fact, Phil had tripped once himself so he figured he wasn't doing too badly) and once at the top, he produced a second set of keys, and opened up a red door, which Dan followed him through. Thankfully, the space behind this one was significantly larger. 

If his house was anything to go by, Phil was a person who was very opposed to walls. The space was large and box shaped, with wooden floors adorned by various multi-coloured rugs with the corners turned up. Against the back wall was a shiny but worn leather sofa with a blanket draped over one arm, and a coffee table just in front. Pushed into the corner was a rougher red chair, pristine as though either rarely used or very new. 

In the centre was a large dining table with six chairs. It appeared to be a dumping ground for... just about everything, with piles of papers, tangles of wires and even some flora covering every square inch. Some of the mess had spilt into the floor, notably a large pile of socks gathering at the head of the table. 

The kitchen area was comparatively clean, the black units shining under the sunlight streaming through the window. The various utensils sticking out of jars and hanging off the walls looked positively pristine, and Dan could see the edge of a pizza box peeping out from beneath the lid of the bin. 

This was a flat, which was like a house but smaller. Dan didn't quite understand the need for a distinction, but this was a learning experience. He also didn't quite understand what it was he was supposed to do with himself at this precise moment. 

Phil deposited the shopping bag beside it, then dropped down into the sofa and patted the space beside him pointedly. Dan shuffled over, and perched stiffly on the edge. He kept his eyes firmly affixed to the floor.

There was silence for a moment, then Phil broke it by saying, "Do you want to tell me why you were so upset?" 

"I wasn't upset. I was... Overwhelmed." 

"Overwhelmed?" 

"Yes."

"By the crowd?" 

'By the fact that I'm on a new planet where I don't know where anything works, and everything hit me like a tidal wave all at once, and everyone seemed determined to be in my face, and I just want to know how everything works and what to do so that I can function in this strange, strange place.'

"Yes."

For some reason, he didn’t look convinced, but said, "I get that completely, I hate crowds. Don't like... Worry or be embarrassed or anything."

"I wasn't. Thank you though." 

Phil smiled slightly sadly (Dan could by now write some sort of paper on the inability of humans to pick one expression and stick to it) then scanned his face with his eyes. Dan followed with his own. 

"So did you mean it when you said that you had nowhere to stay?"

"Yes."

"But that's not why you were sad?" 

"Well... A little bit. I may not have cried without the crowd, but not having anywhere to stay made the crying stronger, I think." 

"...that makes sense." 

Dan was making sense. A hundred human points to him. 

"I'm glad." 

Phil put his thumb to his bottom lip again, and furrowed his brow slightly. 

"Right, okay, so you said you had money, yeah?" Dan nodded. "And I take it you don't know this place very well." He shook his head. "So, why don't we have something warm to drink, you can talk to me if you want or not if you don't, and then we can go and look for a hotel or B&B or something.”

Dan didn't like the idea of drinking hot liquid, (the only hot liquid on his planet came from volcanoes, so had somewhat worrying connotations) nor did he know what a B&B was. But he found himself agreeing with a small nod. 

"Okay. You like hot chocolate, right? Of course you do, everyone likes hot chocolate." He retreated to the kitchen area, and began rooting through an overhead cupboard.

Something to add to his mental encyclopaedia of human behaviour. 'Everyone likes hot chocolate.'

***

Dan (or rather his human tastebuds) did indeed like hot chocolate. It didn't taste at all like lava, instead coating his mouth in a layer of fuzzy warmth, and making him feel a little bit tingly on the inside. He drank it slowly, barely parting his lips, in order to savour every molecule. Phil had made light work of his, emptying his mug in about twenty second flat, but didn't break the silence until Dan was tipping his mug back to get the last drops. He cleared his throat, and his expression suggested that he was about to ask a question he didn't especially want to ask.

"This is going to sound really weird and like... Probing, but exactly how much money do you have? Because you know... There's no point going to the Ritz if you've only got fifty quid and stuff. Or dressed like that... Probably. I mean no offence, like, I wouldn't get in either, but..."

He trailed off. 

Dan didn't know what the Ritz was (perhaps it was a type of B&B) but he figured that if he wasn't going there, it didn't particularly matter. 

He shuffled forwards until he was perched on the edge of the sofa, then scooped the notes that They had given him out of his pocket and spread them out on the table. 

"I have exactly five hundred pounds," he said without counting them, looking Phil directly in the eye. 

Phil blinked. 

"Yeah. Wow, you do don't you. In... Cash." 

Phil got that look on his face again, as though he was going to ask a question that made him uncomfortable. 

"Dan..?"

"Yes?" 

"Is this money stolen? I mean I'm not judging or anything, that's the last thing I want to do, but if it is you'll only make it worse for yourself, and you're probably best to just sort out whatever's going on and-"

"-no, no. It isn't stolen."

Well... It was. By a higher alien life form. But Dan wasn't especially keen to disclose that. 

“Right... okay. Cool. Good,” he flattened his mouth into a line that was a bit like a smile but not quite. Then he cleared his throat, “So it looks like a lot of money, but won’t last very long here I’m afraid. So... how long are you planning to stay here?”

In truth, the answer was for as long as They decided he needed to be there, and that could have been a day or a decade. So he settled for, “Indefinitely.”

“Indefinitely? Yeah, five hundred quid isn’t ‘indefinite’ money in London. But there are places you could stay for a little while for not too much money.”

“That sounds wonderful, thank you.”

“Until you get a job... if that’s what you’re doing,” he bit his lip, “But to be honest... my advice would be to sort out whatever’s happened at home and go back.”

Dan smiled pleasantly, “I told you. Nothing happened at home. I just wanted...” now what was that expression they were so fond of? “A fresh start.”

Phil nodded to the floor.

“Okay.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hello! Thanks for coming back, or sticking around or... However you got here! 
> 
> Please, as the story progresses, let me know if there's anything you'd like me to tag, or anything like that. 
> 
> Comments would be much appreciated.
> 
> Thanks for reading!

It turned out that Phil wasn't joking when he said that five hundred pounds wasn't 'indefinite' money in London. Five hundred pounds was 'you can maybe afford to stay in a very basic room for about a week, but it's not certain that you'll be able to eat' money. Nevertheless it was better than his other option, which was the park bench where he'd cried a few hours before. 

Phil had walked him straight to a building four streets away from his own, with peeling paint around the door and tape over one of the ground floor front windows. But there were pretty flowers on the sign and even prettier flowers in the window boxes so Dan figured it couldn't be all that bad. 

That was one of his favourite things to learn about Earth. The flowers. Except sunflowers. They intimidated him for some reason. Somehow they... seemed over ambitious, with how tall they were. Which was an... Odd sentiment for a six-foot-four human to have. 

Additionally, the sign read, "Julie's B&B," then below in smaller cursive print, "Does what it says. A bed and a breakfast!" So that was one of his questions answered anyway. And that must have been a good omen, surely. 

Julie turned out to be a woman teetering on the edge of old age with grey-blonde shoulder length hair and crystal blue, fatigued eyes. She appeared to have a whole lot of kindness spooling inside her, but it was buried in layers and layers of tiredness and grumpiness. She told Dan and Phil the breakfast times and her prices per person - seventy pounds a night, the first of which he paid upfront - and Dan told her that he was the only one staying. She raised a questioning eyebrow to Phil. 

"I'm just settling him in."

She nodded slowly. "Does he need much... Settling in?" she asked, eyes drifting to his hands empty of luggage.

Phil blinked, apparently noticing his lack of possessions for the first time, then said, "I guess we'll see."

Dan simply smiled, which was becoming his favourite method of dispelling awkward questions. Though he supposed he hadn't tried many others yet. 

"Go and get him settled in then," Julie said quietly, handing him the key. She also looked only Phil in the eye when she spoke. Dan found that a little odd, since it was his key, but decided not to give it too much thought. "It's the third room at the top of the stairs. The bottom of the door might need a bit of a kick if it doesn't open straight away."

"Thank you!" Phil said brightly, then made swiftly for the stairs. His cheerful, face fell as soon as they'd turned away. "Way to treat your customers," he muttered with half a scowl once they were at the top of the stairs and in front of the door. (He'd only tripped once that time. He was learning.)

"What do you mean?" 

"Did you not notice? She wouldn't look you in the eye, she gave me the keys... You're a human being."

Yes. Indeed. A human being. Human person. Absolutely. That's precisely what he was.

Dan swallowed and looked at the floor. 

"Yes, I did notice. It was only after she realised I don't have any luggage. People are very concerned with possessions," he said, remembering his training on capitalism and economics. 

Phil hummed in agreement. 

"Yeah. Maybe something else too but... I don't know," Dan frowned at that, but didn't comment. "Though, not to be... I don't know, is hypocritical the right word? I don't think it is but I'm going to say it anyway. Not to be... Whatever it is I'm being, but why don't you have any stuff?" 

Yes, why didn't he? He could have done with some 'stuff,' he had begun to realise. They hadn't been especially effectual at kitting him out. But precisely nothing except the means to just about have a roof over his head for a week was what he'd been given, and all he could do now on Earth was stick to his story. 

"Fresh start," he said simply. 

Phil nodded, mouth flattening and eyes rolling halfway back into his skull. "Sure." Then, he pushed the key into the lock.

The room was very small indeed, about seven feet wide and nine long, with a single bed pushed into the corner. It was dressed with yellow bedclothes that were trying to be cheerful, but we're only achieving giving the room a bit of a sickly, stifling feeling. The only decoration was a loudly ticking clock, (thankfully, Earth time hadn't taken too much getting his head around. It was still measured in numbers, the increments were just a bit smaller) the only window was tiny, and far higher than even his eye line. He didn't think he'd be able to reach it to open it. There was a small television affixed to the wall next to the door and opposite the bed. There was also a dark wood end table with a kettle and small bowl of tea bags, coffee sachets and... Something else. Dan picked one of them up between his fingers. Milk, apparently. In a pod. He was under the impression that milk came from cows, and after that was kept in a fridge. Interesting. He put it back gingerly. 

On the wall opposite the bed was another door, which Phil sidled over to and pushed open. Behind it was a small sink, a toilet, and a shower for someone much shorter than Dan with a lot less limb to fold into it. On top of the back of the toilet was a line of soaps and shampoos in little bottles. That was nice, Dan thought. 

"Whoa... Ian said it was tiny but I didn't know it'd be... This tiny."

Dan frowned. "Ian?" 

"A friend. That's why I bee-lined here. I've housed a lot of friends in a lot of places like this around here, and this is the one with the best report."

Dan nodded. And filed away, 'bee-lined.' He liked that expression. 

"Julie didn't seem to know you."

"No, I don't normally give them the 'settling in' treatment. But I thought you might appreciate a bit of looking after. You haven't had the best day, by the looks of things." 

"No, I haven't. Thank you." 

Phil smiled. 

"No problem,” then, his smile fell a little, and he began to chew on his lip slightly. Then he said, “I have a feeling I know the answer, but I’m going to ask one more time. Are you going to tell me why you were sad earlier?”

“I’ve already told you. The crowd.”

He nodded slowly. 

“Yeah. The crowd.”

Dan smiled. Phil didn’t. Dan would really need to work on his reactions. It seemed smiling didn’t work all the time.

Phil cleared his throat. 

“Listen, do you want to give me your phone number? In case you need anything or if you just... want to chat.”

So this was another Very Important Thing that They'd emitted from his preparations. If he were a human, he'd be suing. 

“I don’t have a phone.”

“You don’t have a phone?

“No.”

“Okay. Right. Of course you don’t, I guess," Phil shook out his head a little, and laughed as though it should have been obvious. "Erm... shall I... pop round tomorrow. Can you be here? After I get back from work at like... four ish?”

Dan blinked.

“You don’t need to do that.”

“I’d like to.”

He thought for a moment. He was taking everything at face value, as was his own personal mission statement, but surely, surely it couldn’t be this simple. 

Humans were people who hated and fought and stole and burned and destroyed and had no regard for grammatical rules. That’s what he learnt in Training.

Not people who smiled and worried and accommodated and went out of their way and offered cookies earnestly and made hot chocolate. 

Suspicion was bubbling up inside him. 

But... he liked Phil. He wanted to see Phil again. 

“Okay. Yes. Thank you.”

Phil beamed. This was the first time he'd smiled with his teeth. It was a wonderful sight. Dan filed it away next to 'flowers that aren't sunflowers.'

“Cool! Awesome. Shall I... leave you to get... um... not unpacked. Freshened up, I guess?”

Dan nodded. As much as he liked Phil, he needed a while to himself. Being human was... A lot. “Yes please.”

“Okay. Four tomorrow, yeah?”

“I look forward to it.”

“Cool." He paused before turning to the door. "Sure you’re okay?” His brow was doing that crinkly thing. 

“Yes, thank you.”

“Alright. See you then.”

"Yes."

The door clicked softly as he shut it.

***

What happened next would possibly be classified as a rather spectacular breakdown by human medical professionals. 

All of a sudden, a thousand ton weight labelled 'on a new planet where everything arises suspicion and everything has been conditioned into you as hostile and you don't know the customs and are laughably unprepared and you've been here less than three hours and have already cried and the window is too high and the bedsheets are too yellow and it's too hard to take everything at face value when the first person you meet on a big scary planet filled with big scary people is too nice to be real' dropped from the sky and landed slap bang on the top of Dan's head. 

And then his legs were buckling, and his heart was beating a lot faster than it was a moment ago, and his mouth was dry, and his vision was blackening at the edges. He felt his behind hit the floor, and the edge of the bed dig into his back, but somehow it didn't feel real. He felt like he was becoming detached from everything around him and breaking off into a thousand pieces, but at the same time, everything was heightened and he felt too real, rooted to the churning core of the Earth, like he was connected to everything and nothing was making sense and it was all overwhelming and surely... Surely... This is what humans felt like when they died. 

He pressed a fist to his chest, and scrabbled his strange, floppy human feet until his knees were tucked under his chin, then wrapped his arms around his shins and pressed his hands together. 

Then he tried to think about the golden grass and purple sky of his planet. Tried to feel comforted by the thoughts of home. 'Home.'

But all he ended up seeing was a pair of eyes that were coloured an impossible shade. 

Fascinating. 

Once he realised he wasn't, in actual fact, dying, he realised that he needed to calm down if he was going to be able to function again. So he decided to make a list in his head of things that he liked about Earth so far. It was a short list, but he'd only been there three hours, so he supposed it was promising. 

-Flowers (not sunflowers.)

-Hot chocolate.

-Little bottles of shampoo and soap. 

-"Bee-lined."

-Philip Michael Lester's eyes.

-Philip Michael Lester's smile. 

-Philip Michael Lester.


	4. Chapter 4

Dan knew he needed to explore - there wasn't much that could be learnt about humanity by staring at a wall - but he didn't quite feel like leaving just yet. It was also rather dark, so according to his Training, everyone was either getting ready for bed, getting ready to get drunk, or getting ready to murder someone. So he switched on the television. 

Television had been described to him as a 'brainwasher, babysitter, educator and blinder the inevitability of death all in one.' He had been shown about ten minutes worth of something called, 'Keeping Up With The Kardashians' (apparently the basis for entire social lives on Earth) and decided that though he didn't understand it, he could see why it was called a 'brainwasher,' because he'd been rather disappointed when They turned it off. He'd also been shown something called, 'Doctor Foster,' in which 'Doctor Foster,' wasn't actually a real doctor at all, but someone paid to pretend to be. 

Humans enjoy escapism, and some people make a career out of it. It was quite a nice system. 

Dan decided to let whatever was on run. It turned out to be a show about real people, playing a game where they had to make words out of jumbled up letters, and use numbers to make other numbers. But they weren't taking it very seriously. They kept breaking off into fits of laughter and shouting, and the audience were finding it very funny indeed. 

They also kept saying the word 'fuck.' And 'fucking.' And 'fucker.' Dan knew that it was swearing, which was bad. But the audience seemed to find it ever so funny whenever it was said. And it seemed so... Evocative. People listened when they said it. 

He decided to file that word away for future use. 

"My name is Dan fucking Howell," he said to the empty room. Then he smiled.

He watched the people make very bad anagrams for another twenty minutes or so, then realised that a very momentous occasion was on the horizon. He needed his first wee on Earth. 

Oh, the excitement. 

His previous body had chemicals that broke down waste and reverted it back to surplus energy that could be stored for emergencies, but humans had to go through the counter-productive, rather ritualistic process of constantly removing things from their bodies and then putting them back it. Maybe that was why they seemed to be so determined to make life difficult for themselves. Their bodies did it anyway. 

Human Training Day 12 had been dedicated to bodily functions - it was a riveting one - so the process itself wasn't foreign to him. But he'd thought that perhaps it would feel different on Earth. It didn't. He flushed the toilet feeling rather underwhelmed. 

"Well that was fucking disappointing," he said to it. 

He consoled himself by breaking into one of the little bottles of soap, which smelled like roses. He liked the smell of roses, but didn't give it a separate category in his 'good things about Earth' list, instead filing it under 'flowers (not sunflowers.)'

When he walked back into the bedroom, the clock read 11:14. Breakfast was served from 8:00 according to Julie, and adult human males of between twenty-six and sixty-four years of age require between seven and nine hours of sleep per night for proper cognitive function. He figured that the closer he could get to the top end of that boundary, the better. That was logical. 

So, he turned off the chattering comedians, slipped off his shoes and slipped under the yellow bedsheets that reminded him just a little too much of sunflowers. Then he shut his eyes. 

That was how sleep worked right? So why wasn't he asleep? 

Practical lessons on sleep had been emitted from the Human Training process... He'd just been told what to do. So he assumed it would be easy. Like a sort of... Drifting off. But he was staying firmly tethered to where he was. 

He tried turning over and facing the wall. He tried flipping onto his stomach. He tried curling up into a ball. He tried lifting his legs to tuck under his chin. He got up and wandered around the room. He checked the clock. 3:36. He washed his hands with the rose soap again. He ended up exactly where he'd started, on his back in bed again. He sighed. 

Apparently, he wasn't very good at sleeping. 

He screwed up his eyes and forced himself to try again. Counted to a hundred. Two hundred. Two hundred and fifty-four. Gave up. Why wasn't it working? 

His head was beginning to ache behind his eyes, so he relaxed them a little. He tried to focus his attention on his own breathing. The melodic movement of it. The... Up, and down. Up and down. Up and down. The sound. A soft 'puff' then a louder one. Soft. Loud. Soft. Loud. 

And... There! 

A shred of tiredness. That was tiredness, surely. 

But... No. Don't focus on that. 

Up, down. Up down. 

Soft, loud. Soft, loud. 

Up, down. Up, down. 

Soft, loud. Soft, loud. 

A fuzzy feeling. 

A sinking. 

Ah. That was sleep. 

***

Dan's human body, much to his disdain, did not have an in built alarm clock. Well... Neither did his old body, but he was allowed to shun everything about his current situation, he was grumpy. Humans got grumpy when they'd had a bad night's sleep. He was just... being authentic. 

He awoke at quarter past nine, fifteen minutes after Julie would have stopped serving breakfast. Given the reception he'd been given yesterday, he didn't exactly feel like popping down to the kitchen and asking if there were any sausages left over. 

But his stomach was grumbling, sounding rather like the enormous vehicles that seemed to be insisting on rattling past the window every ten seconds or so. It seemed that his body was trying to tell him that it was time to face the world again. He wouldn't cry this time. He wouldn't. 

So he stuck his leg out of the bedsheets, then rather gracelessly rolled onto the floor. As he went, he deposited four hundred and thirty pounds on the mattress. He'd slept with the money in his pocket, and it had at least had the curtesy to stay there all night. Not anymore. He sighed, and scooped it up, and gathered it into as neat a pile as he could before haphazardly shoving it back where it had come from. 

He had a second Earth wee, washed his hands with the rose soap (took a moment to consider whether the amount of joy he got from that soap would be considered odd or not - he didn't reach a conclusion) then took the mug from the tea tray and took some water from the tap. He gulped it down in one, remembering something about humans drinking to give them courage, then remembered that it didn't tend to work with water. 

Then, he shoved his feet into his shoes, and took a deep breath in. 

He was facing the world, and he was going to be absolutely fine. 

Yes. 

Definitely. 

Julie was behind the counter with her chin rested on her fist, and a mountain of paperwork that she was ignoring beside her elbow. Her eyes were clouded over and staring into the distance, but they cleared and snapped up when Dan's foot creaked on the final step. She gave him a very odd look... There was something probing in it, something like a sort of... Morbid curiosity. 

Dan smiled at her, and she didn't smile back, but instead muttered a flat, "Good morning." 

At that moment in time, it wasn't for either of them as far as he could tell, but he repeated it to her regardless, in what he hoped was rather a lighter tone. She nodded minutely, and watched him with narrow eyes as he slipped out of the door. 

He sighed once he was outside. The frosty reception from her was compromising his optimism. What was her problem?

The air was colder than it had been the day before, and it was making his skin prickle. It was biting, and felt as though it was stripping his nose bare every time he breathed in. He wrapped his arms around his waist, and decided that once he'd eaten, perhaps he could go looking for some more clothes. It appeared that it had passed Them by that clothes become somewhat... Shall we say fragrant fairly quickly. One set certainly wasn't going to cut it for an 'indefinite' stay. He was pushing it already. 

He wasn't overly keen to go too far - he wanted to be able to find his way back - but it didn't look as though there was anything other than houses besides Julie's B&B on the street. He'd just have to pay attention to where he was walking. 

He could sense commotion coming from the left, which in truth, made him want to run and never turn back, but he knew that commotion meant people and people quite possibly meant food and clothes. He set his jaw into what was intended to be a look of steely determination and started to walk. 

When he reached the end of the street, he saw a small gathering of people emerging from a street opposite. They were all holding little brown bags, and eating things out of little brown bags. Going where they'd come from seemed like an obvious choice. 

He stepped off the pavement and began to walk, then almost immediately there was a screech and a shout of, "What the hell are you doing you bloody idiot?" 

To his left was a car, very close to him, with a rather angry man hanging out of the window with his arm raised. Dan wasn't quite sure what he was so angry about. He'd seen him, and stopped. Surely that was what was supposed to happen. He scampered the rest of the way across the road, which was rather difficult because his legs had inexplicably turned to jelly. He leaned against a wall for a second with his eyes shut to gather some air into his lungs, and tried to get his legs to properly support his torso. 

When he opened his eyes, he saw a fair few staring back at him, so he ducked his head and moved as quickly as his legs would allow him towards the place where he'd seen the people emerge from. 

The street wasn't quite as crowded as the place where he'd met Phil the day before, but it was certainly busier than he'd have liked. And everyone seemed to know what they were doing, eyes fixed ahead assuredly as though they could see their next ten steps painted in their minds like a map. He was almost disconcerted, until he remembered how concerned humans tend to be with concealment. 

He fixed his eyes ahead trying to look as confident as them as he could, and began scanning for food establishments. There appeared to be about five on his first glance. Because humans love to complicate things, don't they. He didn't really understand why there was such a need for different types of food, on a practical level. They were scientifically savvy enough to know the food groups, and surely one of each would suffice.

Yes, that made perfect sense. He should run for government. It'd be easy, he was sure. 

His stomach grumbled again, so he decided to just duck into the first shop that looked like it sold food. It a small shop, busy but not heaving. Across one wall was a a display of sandwiches and rolls, and along the other, cakes. However, both seemed to be being ignored. He heard four people in the queue in front of him order a sausage roll.

See, they were only proving his point. The level of variety was confusing for everyone. 

The man at the counter looked a lot younger and a lot greaser than him, an impressive sheen covering his forehead and cheeks. His lips were set into a scowl, and his eyes would have looked rather murderous had they been on 'Doctor Foster.' Something told him that smiling wasn't the best approach for him, so he schooled his features to be neutral, and said, "A sausage roll, please."

The man grunted, and wrapped it in a small paper bag. "90p." 

Dan was sure there was supposed to be a 'please' on the end, but maybe not. He was still learning. He fished a five pound note out of his pocket, and deposited it on the counter. The man looked at it for about ten seconds, then said, "Do you 'av any change?" 

Dan shook his head. 

The boy huffed, and his scowl deepened. He picked up the note, and scrabbled around in the till with about the enthusiasm of a man taking a walk to the gallows. He dropped the money on the counter, letting the coins spill across it, and stared at Dan as he scooped it up. He continued glaring once he'd finished, and Dan took that as his cue that interaction was over. 

"But fucking rude," he mumbled once outside. Then he remembered that he was being optimistic, and that the man may well have had a terrible morning. And he'd gotten his breakfast, so it was in fact, a mission accomplished. 

He spotted a spare bench and bee-lined for it (excellent expression). Benches were being good to him on Earth, it seemed. He dropped down onto it, and reached into the little bag. The warmth was tingling beneath his fingers. 

He was about to eat his first meal on Earth. 

The instant he took a bite, he understood the need for variety. Because the things that were happening on his tastebuds were... Not for practical reasons. In fact, they were entirely impractical, messing with his perfect and efficient system of one type of food per food group. He felt the burning desire to try every single food this planet had to offer, to see which dances they performed on his tongue. 

That was something humans got right apparently. Sausage rolls. He thought that they deserved their own spot on his 'good things' list. 

Once he'd finished, he stuffed the bag into his empty pocket, sat back and just watched for a little while. 

He watched a small child run excited circles around her mother, whose tired eyes were fixed to her phone. He watched as a suited man with a forlorn face slipped into a solicitors office which advertised itself as specialising in 'family affairs.' He watched as a girl and a boy walked stiffly two feet apart from each other, both stealing glances when the other wasn't looking as though they wanted to speak but couldn't find any words. 

He sighed, the sausage roll based brief euphoria well and truly diluted. 

He wished Phil was there. Phil smiled a lot. 

Next on his agenda was clothes - he kept catching whiffs of his armpits and wondered why They hadn't warned him of the joys of body odour. He was fairly sure that they wouldn't be as easy to source as food had been, once again because of humans' strange fascination with having thousands and thousands of options for just about everything. 

He had learnt on Human Training Days 89 and 90 that clothing was a tricky business on Earth. There were nonsensical and strange rules to adhere to. For example, men were not allowed to wear skirts unless it was a very special kind of skirt and they came from Scotland. There was no real reason for this, they just... Weren't. Girls were allowed to wear skirts, but they weren't allowed to be too short because the men might get distracted. Dan thought that it should have been the man's problem whether or not he got distracted, but anyway. Pink was a 'feminine' colour so men shouldn't wear it. Infants were colour coded as blue for boys and pink for girls. 

He sighed. 

He needed to find clothes suitable for an adult male of twenty-six years, that adhered to all the rules. He supposed he'd need to get started. 

The first shop he came to which sold clothes was very very loud and very very pink. There were a lot of girls in there, bright girls, many of them holding large bags. There were bursts of raucous laughter to be heard every few minutes. Dan made it about two steps in before he backed out again in fear. 

The second was a lot quieter, with floaty music playing. This one was in fact populated by men, but they seemed to be a lot older than him, some moustached, and some with grey hairs sprouting from the tops of their heads. He wandered in slowly, and ran his fingers along a beige woollen jumper. Then he felt the unmistakable feeling of someone staring at him, right down his neck. He turned, and a man a little shorter than him with cat-like whiskers protruding from his chin was giving him a dirty, dirty look over the top of his spectacles. It was the same look Julie had been giving him, right down to the ice behind the eyes. What was he doing wrong?

Whatever it was, he was in the wrong shop. He ducked his head, and left as quickly as he could. 

The third was very shiny and very expensive. He couldn't have shopped there and also afforded to eat and sleep in a bed that night. His eyes found themselves lingering on a few items though - lavish looking jumpers and sparkly shoes - which he found rather odd considering he didn't understand clothes all that well. There was something appealing about them, and apparently, he had expensive tastes. He lingered for a fair while, found himself once again falling victim to staring, judging eyes and left. 

He'd exhausted all the shops on the street he'd deemed 'safe' because he could just about see Julie's B&B from it, and was therefore unlikely to get lost. He needed to venture out further. So, he engaged his limbic system, drew up a little map in his brain and rounded the corner. 

The heavens decided to open at that precise moment. The previously brilliantly bright sky suddenly turned a miserable grey and started making noises that were not unlike the ones that his stomach had been making a few hours previously. Within a few seconds, Dan was very wet indeed. 

He stood there, gormless for a while - he had never been rained on before, and it was an odd sensation. The duality of the rain slipping of his skin but soaking into his clothes, the way it flattened his hair to his forehead, how cold it was. It felt like a new state of being, and for a moment, he couldn't imagine ever being dry again. It was mystifying. 

Then, the shock wore off, and he realised that being cold and wet wasn't actually very nice at all. It was making him heavy and soggy, and he really really wanted to be inside. He saw a shop about twenty yards or so away that looked vaguely 'clothesy,' and took off towards it, skipping slightly in his haste. He decided that he was going to buy his clothes from there, no exceptions, he'd just live with what they had, because he was cold and wet and wanted to go back to scowling Julie's B&B, where Phil would be fairly soon. 

As luck would have it, the shop wasn't too pink, or too old, or too expensive. It seemed to be... Multi-purpose. And the heating was on. That was a nice bonus. There also weren't too many people in there, which reduced the chances of getting glared at. 

The stands and tables boasted clothes of all colours and all patterns - greens and reds and browns and blues and every shade of each of those colours on the visible spectrum. Well... Maybe not, but certainly close. Dan ran his fingers over some of them, committing their textures and feels to memory. He found himself rather lost as to where to start. 

He'd learned that humans sometimes tried to express themselves through their clothing. If they were exuberant people, they would wear bright colours. If they were people who liked to be smart, they'd wear a suit and tie. If they were people who liked a specific sports team, they might wear the shirt of that team. He'd also learned that doing so was something of a double edged sword. It meant that people were being honest and comfortable with their own identities, which was a very good thing that made sense. It also meant, however, that people were more vulnerable to be attacked for visibly being themselves, which was a very bad thing that did not make sense. 

Regardless, he decided to give it a go. 

That day, he'd woken up late, been glared at by his host, almost gotten run over, been grunted at by the man in the pastry shop, been started down in every shop he'd been into, been denied things he'd wanted because of his economic depravity and been rained on. 

In the end, he bought two black t-shirts, a black jumper, a black coat, some black socks and underwear and two pairs of black jeans. 

That summed up his morning fairly well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ten points if you can guess what he was watching, ten more if you can guess where he got the sausage roll from!


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi there... Thanks for sticking around! As always, comments would be much appreciated. Hope you're having fun!

He was down to £365 by the time he returned. It was most definitely not a good idea to go on any more shopping sprees, and he'd have to ration his sausage roll intake. His culinary adventure would need to wait. He paid Julie for that night on the door, and she took the money silently without looking him in the eye. He consoled himself with the fact that at least she wasn't glaring.

His nose told him when he got back that he could really do with a shower, but he wasn't exactly keen on the idea. He hadn't enjoyed rain all that much, and a shower was essentially... Rain in a box. But, it was warmer and the shower gel and shampoo both smelt like roses too and he rather liked the idea of smelling like roses. 

So, he deposited his grey clothes on the floor and stepped in. 

He was really starting to question Their decision to make him a fair bit taller than average. He was pretty certain that wasn't why the people who had glared at him had done so, but it was probably a factor. His height made him more visible, after all. He found that his limbs were rather difficult to control, and his toes had poked out of the duvet a little bit. The next on the list of inconveniences was that the water from the shower spilt only over his shoulders. He had to duck and contort himself to get his head under the stream. But other than that, showering wasn't an especially dreadful experience. The pitter pattering of the water on the door and floor was rhythmic and rather calming. And for all that Julie had a face like thunder, she was certainly good at cleaning. The cubicle had a faint smell of lemon, which he decided he also liked. Not as much as rose though. 

He towelled himself dry with some difficulty; the bathroom was very very small. He was still damp when he stepped out into the bedroom, and his hair was taking on a rather more puffy quality than it had done previously. He hadn't quite decided if he liked that or not yet. 

A human skill that he hadn't yet mastered was that of wiggling into tight jeans when slightly damp, which he thought could have had its own distinction in that odd collection of physical challenges, 'The Olympics.' He wouldn't make the team yet. Twice he toppled over into the bed, and it took him a good ten minutes to wrench the material up his thighs. Perhaps he'd gotten the wrong size. They were... Rather tight. Strangely though, he rather liked the feeling of them. The t-shirt was rather less of an uphill struggle (once he'd found the head hole, he was flying) but socks were strange, mystical things. Aligning his heel to the bobbly bit took far longer than he'd anticipated, and they bunched up at his ankles in uncomfortable rolls. Also, apparently his feet were also disproportionately large, as despite the fact that he'd bought the largest size, his toes were becoming scrunched up at the top. 

Even though he felt sort of... Squeezed into quite a few of his items of clothing, he had to admit that once he was dressed, he felt good. Fresh. A full length mirror was absent from the room, which disappointed him a bit, even though he wasn't really sure what he'd be looking for even if there was one. What did 'good' look like with regards to human fashion? He hoped it looked something like him. 

He hoped Phil liked it. 

Phil's smile crept into his head again, and it had the weird and wonderful effect of making him smile too. It was ten past three by that point, fifty minutes before Phil was due to make his visit, and with every passing moment, something was gathering in Dan's stomach. 

He believed, though he wasn't sure, that it was something called, 'butterflies.' Except not real butterflies, because butterflies were slimy insects that sulked for a while then sprouted wings, and lived outside, not in stomachs. 'Butterflies' was the analogy used for when people are nervous, yet excited for something to happen. 

Why Dan was nervous, he wasn't sure. Why he was excited, even less so. 

He suspected that maybe it had something to do with the fact that Phil was kind, and smiley, and his eyes were a thousand colours all at once. (Hyperbole used. Tick.)

Well... He had fifty minutes to think about it.

***

Dan waited at the (very high) window from ten to four onwards (standing on the bed, and probably putting considerable strain on the not exactly new bed slats) and felt his heart constrict in panic when the clock ticked over to a minute past. Logically, he knew that humans aren't generally the most punctual of people, and the image of the dense London crowd was still fresh in his mind, but in reality, his logical facilities had done a fair bit of resting on their laurels since he'd become human. 

His mind became fogged with images of Phil being hit by a car, or bundled into the back of a van, or being presented with a better offer than going to see Dan. They all struck the same concentration of terror through his being. He wondered why he cared so much about a man he'd met once. 

Luckily, he had only three minutes to invent fantastical tragedies. Phil rounded the corner at four minutes past four. Dan craned his neck to watch him get through the door - he could still run off or be dragged off at the last moment - then clambered off the bed and endeavoured to create a sitting position that looked as though he'd been there a while. He was still trying to establish what best to do with his legs when footsteps sounded on the stairs outside. He panicked, and they ended up crossed in a rather uncomfortable, contorted position. Phil, however, in a move that gained him even more esteem in Dan's eyes, knocked and waited before entering.

Dan rather laboriously untangled his legs, then called, "You can come in." 

Phil entered and his smile was already on show. The yellow of the bedsheets somehow became a little brighter with his presence. And simultaneously, more tolerable. 

"Hi!"

"Hi," Dan smiled. His heart was making little fluttery movements, that he hoped were induced by Phil rather than some malfunction of the circulatory system. Phil stood in front of Dan, bouncing from one foot to the other a little. He looked him up and down, then his eyes widened by a minuscule amount. 

"Wow, God you look good!"

Dan felt all warm and tingly. He was starting to seriously consider the possibility of a circulatory malfunction. 

"Thank you." 

"Maybe that'll stop Jane from being all... Eyeball daggery," Phil said offhandedly, a streak of bitterness running through his words. 

"Jane?"

"Is that not her name? The lady who owns this place."

Dan frowned. 

"Julie?" 

"Yeah, her."

"Why would it do that?" 

Phil paused. His cheeks flushed slightly, painting his pale face a light pinky hue. 

"Well..." Phil looked down and started playing with his fingers, a sheepish look clouding over his face, "I think that she was funny with you because you didn't have any stuff, and also what you were wearing was a little bit... Prisony."

"What does that mean?"

"Well, that..." He trailed off, "They look like what they give to prisoners to wear. A bit. And maybe Julie got the wrong idea about you. Especially because all your money is in cash, and you don't have any things and... I'm going to... Stop talking now."

"No, no please don't. So what exactly did she think?" 

"Well, I don't know! I'm not exactly in her brain, but I think that maybe she might have thought that... Don't laugh... You're an escaped convict."

Dan certainly didn't laugh.

"...oh."

A silence fell across the room, at the same time a terrible thought entered Dan's mind. 

"Is that what you thought?" 

Phil's eyes widened. 

"No! No. Well... Maybe for like... Three seconds. But then I saw that... Yeah, you're really not. And anyway, I wasn't too concerned about that at the time. More that you were... You know... Crying."

"Oh," Dan repeated. And then, just in case there was any doubt in the matter, "I'm not an escaped convict." 

"I know." 

An awkward pause. 

"Your clothes look good." 

That was called 'changing the subject.' It was a human interaction and communication device that usually followed a topic such as money, love, politics or sex, but these topics were not exclusive. On day sixty four of Human Training, Dan had learnt that it was his job to carry on the flow of conversation, in the hope that it did not go full circle. 

"Thanks. So do yours," and on looking Phil up and down, he realised that it was true. Despite the fact that he didn't really know how clothes worked, what he could see was that his appeared to match what he'd seen of him so far. His t-shirt was bright, in accordance with the light he seemed to emit when he walked into a room. It contrasted with his black hair and jeans, and created a look that demanded attention. It was as though he was intending to announce his presence in a room without using words. And it worked, on Dan anyway. 

Phil laughed, a rather tinkly noise that seemed to come from the bottom of his throat. 

"That's nice of you to say. Not many people do. I've basically been dressing the same since I was about six so..."

"Why fix what isn't broken," Dan said, feeling a self satisfied smirk creep onto his face. He was getting good at these idioms. "I think you look fucking good."

Phil laughed again, but this one was more of a bark, sharp and quick, as though he'd been caught off guard. The light in his eyes that follows laughter, and a lingering ghost of a smile remained. God, swearing was useful. He recovered quickly, and replied with, "Well thank you very much. I'm lucky that I don't work in an office. I'm not sure I'd cope wearing a suit every day."

"Where do you work?" 

"Local radio. I don't do the presenting or anything exciting like that, I just fiddle with buttons and sliders and stuff behind the scenes. Well... A bit more technical than that. Sometimes. It's fun... It's nice." 

Phil's words were said earnestly enough, but they certainly weren't impassioned. His heart and soul clearly wasn't in the job. Dan knew what radio was - he'd been played something called 'Talking Heads' just before having been subjected to 'Keeping Up With The Kardashians' - but he certainly didn't understand what Phil's 'buttons and sliders' job would entail. In an attempt to understand, he asked, "How did you end up doing that?" 

"I did a degree in - wait for it - Video Post Production With Visual Effects. And also one in English Language, but I was never going to use that really. I still can't spell. Anyway, the skills are at least a little bit transferable. It's all about mixing things up and swapping them around to make them interesting, and... Yeah. They hired me. For some reason. I'm about the only person of my age group in England who's ended up in a profession that like... Slightly fits with what I have a qualification in, so I'm really lucky. I guess you know that though."

"Yes," Dan said. 

'I do now,' he thought. 

"While we're on jobs - I'm really sorry to bring this up, but I'm really trying to help - have you started looking yet? Because you know... Five hundred pounds runs out quickly, and I can't exactly see Julie dropping her prices for you if I'm being honest. Also... Food and stuff."

Dan shook his head. 

"No. I haven't started looking." 

They hadn't given him a plan of action before booting him off the ship, but he had a vague idea of what to do. He'd learnt about employment on days eight and nine. He'd look for a job with little experience required, and work his way up. That's what humans did. Easy peasy. That's why he wasn't worrying too much. He told Phil as much, saying, "I'm going to look for a job with little experience required."

Phil let out a strange huff. 

"Yeah, they're everywhere. No issues at all with that picture," he said, but his tone of voice implied the opposite. That was called, 'sarcasm.' Then his nose wrinkled, and the corner of his mouth turned up in an odd, small smile. "Sorry." That was called, 'regret.'

"What's the issue?" 

"Well... I don't know where you're from - I'm very much hoping you'll tell me, but you know... In your own time - but in London, low experience jobs aren't exactly... plentiful. And the ones that do pop up tend to go to graduates who can't get work in their field. Do you... Have any qualifications?" 

Dan shook his head. He had been given the equivalent of a British secondary school education, apparently but a qualification entailed taking an exam, which he'd never done. They had actually spent days a hundred and one and a hundred and two trying to teach him law at a degree level (They'd observed a lot of men in suits with briefcases coming out of law offices and getting into big cars, and had already made the assumption that there is a direct correlation between big cars and prosperity) but it hadn't exactly... Worked. They'd given up about a third of the way through the process, as Dan's brain just wasn't responding. He thought that maybe that was worth mentioning. 

"I have about a third of a law degree." 

Phil laughed. 

"Well, good for you." 

Dan thought for a moment. He tried to picture himself in an office, wearing a suit like Phil had said you had to. He wrinkled his nose. 

"I don't think I want to use it." 

"No, I can't see you as a lawyer or a solicitor or... And anyway, I don't think you need to worry about that, they don't tend to give out jobs in the justice system on fractions of degrees. Well... I don't actually know, but I think it's pretty unlikely." 

Dan leaned towards to set his elbows onto his knees, and rested his chin on his fisted right hand. 

"What do I do then?" 

Phil sighed, and looked off into the distance for a moment or two, then shrugged his shoulders heavily and sighed defeatedly. 

"You know what, I have no idea. Absolutely no idea." 

Dan groaned. 

"Why is life so complicated, Phil?" 

He smiled flatly. 

"There's a lot of people for the universe to co-ordinate and accommodate. That's means a lot of opportunity for things to go wrong." 

"But everyone could try a little bit harder, surely?"

"Yeah, you'd think so," he looked at the floor for a moment, and then clapped his hands together, "Right, that's enough of talking about life and sad things and my job and your lack of job. Let's play a game, or something."

"A game?" 

From what Dan understood, there were three meanings of the word 'game.' The first was that it was something that people went to watch when they didn't want to see their families on Saturday afternoons. They were oases of escapism, where a lot of pies were consumed. One of the most popular games consisted of kicking a ball around a patch of grass until it went into a net. The people who played in these games often got very rich, unless there were female in which case, they often didn't. The reason why was uncertain. The second type of game was played by children, when they pretended to be people they weren't. Some adults did this too, but stopped calling it 'playing games,' and instead called it, 'keeping up appearances.' The third type of game was a type of deception, when people would manipulate other people for their own means. This was called, 'playing with the emotions.' They had observed mostly in school playgrounds, but sometimes through the windows of houses too. 

Dan didn't see a ball or a net, Phil wasn't a child nor did he appear to be 'keeping up appearances,' and he certainly hoped he wasn't playing with his emotions. So perhaps there was a fourth type of game that he didn't know about yet. He didn't know why he was surprised. Knowing humans, there was likely to be a fifth and sixth too. Maybe even a seventh. 

"Yeah! A getting to know you type thing." 

"A getting to know you game?" 

"Yeah!" 

"...why do you want to get to know me?" 

"Because you're cool! Well... Potentially cool, I don't really know yet. You are from what I've seen, but pretty soon, I'll be sure!" 

Dan knew that being described as 'cool' was not necessarily a comment on his body temperature, but more likely on his likability and conversational appeal. All in all, the things that would make a person stick around and want to continue an acquaintance. He frowned. 

"What if you find out I'm not cool?" 

"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it, Danny!" 

Dan had found himself very much not liking 'Danny,' when he'd been choosing what to shorten 'Daniel James Howell' to on Human Training Day one. However, when Phil said it, it sent little tingly impulses shooting up his spine. Fascinating. He swallowed, then nodded. 

"Okay... Tell me about this... Game."

"Right!" Phil edged towards him excitedly, "So, I normally do this with people I know better, but this will probably be more fun, because it means I get to see how your brain works. Which is... Really cool. Anyway, so what we're going to do, is we're going to drop some truth bombs on each other."

He blinked expectantly. Dan narrowed his eyes. 

"Truth... Bombs..?"

He knew what truth was and he knew what bombs were. Somehow, he couldn't make the two fit together in his mind. 

Phil spread his hands and splayed his fingers dramatically. He dropped his tone to a whisper, as though about to disclose something very important. 

"By which I mean... Drumroll please..."

Dan blinked. 

"Okay maybe not," ('note to self,' Dan thought, 'look up, 'drumroll,') "We're going to ask each other questions about ourselves, and the other person has to answer as quickly and honestly as they possibly can. So like... For example, if you said 'Which James Bond am I most like,' I'd probably say, 'Piers Brosnan!' I don't know why I'd say that, I just would, which makes it like... Authentic."

Dan (as well as adding, 'James Bond' and 'Piers Brosnan' to his look up list) nodded slowly. 

"I think I get it.

"Great!" Phil's impossible eyes were lit up like a nebula, "Shall I go first?" 

Dan nodded. 

"Okay... So... If I were a flower, what kind of flower would I be?" 

"A rose," Dan said, without missing a beat. Because roses made him happy and Phil made him happy, so it made sense. For reasons beyond his comprehension, Phil laughed. 

"Ah, so you think I'm a pretty face, with a spiky side?" 

Dan nearly protested, but then remembered that he was being a human, and humans didn't like saying what they actually thought. So he nodded with a smile. 

"Sure." 

"I'm afraid you might be disappointed, I'm a bit boring when it comes to... Concealed evil sides. Or maybe that's just what I want you to think." Phil widened his eyes and leaned back melodramatically. Dan laughed, a small, slightly stifled one through his nose, and shook his head. Phil watched him with a little smile on his face. 

"Alright, it's your go."

Dan began to gaze around the room for a flash of inspiration, but considered that perhaps, 'What colour bedsheets would I be,' or, 'if I were a lamp, what colour would my shade be,' probably wasn't the route to go by. Phil rolled his eyes. 

"Come on, quick! First question that comes into your head. Go!" He snapped his fingers in front of Dan's face.

"I don't know! Um... What would I... Taste like?" 

Phil let out a burst of laugher. Dan wasn't sure, but he had an inkling that he may have said something sexual. That's usually why humans let out bursts of laughter, according to Human Training Day fifty-five, dedicated to comedy. 

"God, we've only just met," Phil said breathily through the laughter. Then he took in a breath and composed himself, "Um... I don't really know. You smell quite a lot like flowers, but I don't know if that's what you'd taste like. Um... Yeah, I'm going to say flowers and move swiftly on. Before this gets weird." 

"...s'already a bit weird."

And it truly was. Everything from Human Training was buzzing around Dan's head and telling him that this wasn't how things were supposed to work. Humans suffered from emotional stunted growth. They didn't talk to strangers, or give them hot chocolate, or 'settle them into' hotel rooms, and they certainly didn't come back once they'd done their good deed. Games were for pie-eaters, children and deceivers and not for twenty-something (at a guess) adults. 

The whole thing was... Weird. 

"Well... You made it weird."

Dan was about to protest that no, it was very much Phil who had made it weird by not sticking to the script as it were, then realised that Phil was referring to the inadvertent sexuality of the 'tasting' question rather than to... Dan's entire life on Earth. 

"Just ask another question." 

"Okay, alright, Mr Forceful," Phil said with a ghost of a smirk, "Um... God... Okay... From looking at me, what object do you think that I'd take to a desert island?" 

Dan wouldn't call himself exactly perceptive yet, but he liked to think that he was learning fast, and was pretty sure that the question wasn't intended to be answered literally and practically. Because if it were, the answer would be the same for every single human being on earth. (A water purifier, according to Day 20, 'human survival skills.') The question was hypothetical and probably intended to be answered accordingly. 

"I don't know you all that well yet. I can only judge on what I've seen, and I'd say... Probably a cookie." 

Phil laughed. 

"Clearly you pick things up fast. Yeah, maybe. But more likely a phone, or my laptop, or... Actually I'd have nowhere to plug it in. And nothing to plug in actually, I limited myself to one thing didn't I? I've backed myself into a bit of a corner here. Anyway, I'm defeating the object of my own game by telling you these things, you're supposed to find them out for yourself."

"I don't mind," Dan said, feeling a smile settle itself onto his face. 

"I do! I can only sell this game for lots of money if I get the rules sorted out in my head." 

He felt his smile grow a little wider. Then felt it drop as he watched Phil's eyes drift to the clock above the door. 

"I guess I'd better leave you in peace for a bit." 

"...oh." 

"I'll come back this time tomorrow if you want! With a bit of luck, I'll have a plan of action about how to get you sorted by that point. You rack your brains too, maybe go to the library and have a look on some websites or something if you have a spare day. Not that I'm assuming..."

"Assume away," Dan interrupted. He quite liked the idea of libraries. He had found it a little bit odd that humans put currency on everything, even words, so found the concept of a building where you can borrow words and put them back for free to be something of a redeeming feature. "I have a spare day."

Phil nodded slightly awkwardly. 

"Well, yeah, maybe... Do that then. Yeah. Anyway, same time tomorrow, with our heads full of amazing plans for the future." 

"I'm fucking excited." 

Phil chuckled, which was sort of like three quarters of a laugh. (As opposed to a giggle which was a half and a scoff which was a third.) "I'm glad. We'll have to remember those questions, and ask them again when we've gotten to know each other a bit better."

Dan smiled. "We will." Then, he felt a line appear in the centre of his forehead, "I'm... A little bit confused as to why you want to get to know me better. I'm a stranger." 

"I think you just answered your own question. You're a stranger. Soon you won't be. Who knows, we might even become best friends." 

"Do you talk to all strangers you find sobbing on the roadside in the hope that you'll become best friends?" 

Phil laughed. (A whole one, this time.) "Well I don't see that many, to be fair. And something told me I should talk to you. Call it fate. My grandma was a psychic, actually. Bye." 

And with a cheery smile, he shut the door behind him.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for sticking around! Comments much appreciated.

Dan repeated his route to the to the bakery at about seven, this time looking both ways before crossing the road, and gathering a lot less strange looks. The person behind the counter was different - a young girl who smiled at him and told him to 'have a lovely evening.' He smiled back, and repeated the sentiment. He ate it on the way back to Julie's. She was absent from the desk, so he couldn't test Phil's theory about her distaste for him being due to the 'prisony' nature of his clothing, but he wouldn't exactly say that he was disappointed. 

He watched a little bit more television, (something where lots of people were told that things they thought were true were not true and the audience laughed) then folded himself back into the short shower. He was establishing something of a routine, he realised, which was something that some humans thrived on, and others hated with a passion. He was somewhat excited to find out which of those he'd be. 

He decided to sleep naked that night, to dispel the smell that had lingered on his old clothes the day before. He knew that sooner or later (read - sooner) he'd have to source some means of washing his clothes. This means was likely to be a washing machine. Humans were complicated and emitted what it was they actually wanted to say from conversation, but he would admit, they were logical when naming household appliances. Though, he thought, the argument could be made that a shower could also be called a washing machine. 

He slipped between the bedsheets. Now, what had he done that had worked? The breathing thing. In... Out... In... Out... No.

No, that wasn't happening. 

Oh for goodness sake. 

Why didn't anyone warn him that sleeping was so difficult?

Well... Everything was difficult, but in all other aspects, he liked to think that he was learning and improving. In sleep... Apparently not. 

The clock told him that it was actually only quarter to nine, so if he by some miracle of nature adhered to the adult recommendation of seven to nine hours of sleep, he'd be waking up at about between quarter to three and quarter to five, which was... Early. 

So, he pulled his clothes back on, and decided to go for a walk. 

Screw the rules about murderers and drunks, he was there for experience. 

A chill hit him once he stepped out of the door, which was the first of his new experiences. He regretted that his coat was still folded in the bottom of the shopping bag, but settled for shoving his hands into the pockets of his jeans and set off in the opposite direction to the one that he'd gone in that morning. After his excursion that morning, he was feeling a bit more optimistic about his navigational skills, but still took care in logging every step. He was building up a tiny life in that sickly yellow bedroom, and he didn't want to start again. Daniel James Howell was beginning to take shape. 

The street looked different at night time, and different than what he expected. It was darker, obviously, but everything also seemed... Stiller. The air seemed to have settled, and there were no flowers swaying in window boxes or feet pattering along the pavement. He felt like he had to be careful what he did with his feet... Like he'd disturb them if he placed one wrong. (And if anyone's feet had displacement powers, it would be his. They had given him disproportionately large feet to go with the rest of his body, which he'd found having had to set up camp in the largest sizes of the shop when buying shoes.) 

From what They had taught him, he'd been expecting the streets to be crawling with unsavoury characters, people wielding weapons and bottles and fighting and shouting. 

But in fact, there was... Nobody. 

The thought crossed his mind that perhaps they were all hiding, but he patted it down until it was hidden in the folds of his brain.

He reached the end of the street, then basked in the stillness for a moment, tilting his face upwards to align with the inky sky. The stars blinked at him, and made him feel a whole lot warmer than he physically did. He felt his mouth tilt into a smile. 

What did they call someone who liked nighttime? 'A night owl,' he dredged up from his mind. Perhaps he was a night Howell. That was another achievement ticked off. 'Pun devised.' 

His mind felt a little clearer than it had done. It gave him time to think, and reflect on his first day and a half on Earth. He'd done quite a lot. He'd drank and eaten and pissed and slept and bought clothes and talked and walked and all with a lot of littler actions in between. It may not have sounded like anything momentous, but in Dan's defence, most humans did a lot less than that on their first day on Earth. Mostly slept and dribbled, from what he understood. 

He'd also met Phil. Phil made him very happy. Phil was what his mind wandered to when it wasn't doing much. Phil had very pretty eyes, and was good at making Dan smile. And Phil was going to come back, Phil wanted to get to know him and Phil wanted to keep making Dan smile. Dan didn't think he'd have to do much to do that... He was smiling at the mere thought. 

He wondered what They were picking up from his logging chip. Sausage rolls and soap and laughter and crying. He hoped that They didn't interpret Phil as being a typical human, because Dan was fairly willing to believe he wasn't. He couldn't be. If everyone on Earth was like Phil, (and they weren't - Julie wasn't, the boy in the shop wasn't, the scowly man wasn't) Earth wouldn't be tucked away in a remote branch of the Milky Way. It'd be a tourist attraction, the envy of the universe, a model for intergalactic societies. 

Dan thought so anyway. Or maybe he was just overtired.

He headed back, to a quiet and still house. When his head hit the pillow, Phil was painted onto his eyelids. It was a nice image to fall asleep to, and he did, far quicker than he had done the night before. 

***

He woke up feeling a lot brighter the next morning, and in time for breakfast. He'd have been quite happy venturing out for another sausage roll, but the breakfast was included in the room price, and his funds were dwindling - even 90p could have made a difference. And he'd made the resolution to try every food Earth had to offer. So, he made himself smell like roses, got dressed in yesterday's clothes (which didn't smell too dire - sleeping naked was apparently a good move) and ventured downstairs. 

Julie was at her desk, so he paid her for that night, watching the notes get stuffed away into the till. He was getting dangerously close to the two hundred pound mark, but was holding out hope that Phil could help him to perform some sort of miracle. If anyone could...

On the bright side, Julie's scowl had diminished a bit, and she looked him in the eye when she took his money. It was amazing what clothing could do. Dan found this rather odd, because if at any point he had been an escaped convict, he would still be an escaped convict whether he was wearing prison issue clothes or not. 'I never was a criminal,' he considered saying to her, but decided to simply smile and accept the workings of her brain. After taking his money, she pointed him in the direction of the breakfast room. 

It was a small, intimate room with a single dining table in the centre. Lining the walls were cabinets of delicate looking China, and along one was a large bay window with morning sunlight streaming in. Dan was the only person there, so he slipped into a seat at the head of the table, and gazed at his lap until a door behind him opened. 

Breakfast wasn't served by Julie, but by a small brunette lady with a name badge that read, 'Nora.' She had a large smile, warm eyes and didn't look as though she had a judging bone in her body. She asked Dan what he wanted to drink, and he proudly and decisively said, "coffee," because that's what human adults drank in the morning. He was less decisive when she asked him how he wanted it, because he had precisely no idea. After an awkward twenty seconds, she promoted him with, "Strong? Weak?" He blinked a few times in quick succession, then stuttered out, "Between... Those... Two. Please." She didn't say anything, but smiled and nodded before slipping back through the door. 

His 'between those two' coffee turned out to actually be very nice. His previous misconceptions about hot drinks had now been proven wrong on two counts. When she brought it through, Nora told him that they offered only a 'Full English' breakfast. Dan was pretending to be English and wanted to be full, so said he'd have one of those. 

The large window allowed him to spend his waiting time people-watching. He watched a small child scamper past, head thrown back in joy and mouth wide open. Who Dan assumed was his mother followed a few seconds later. She looked somewhat less joyful. An elderly couple hobbled past, each leaning heavily on walking sticks. A teenage girl walked past briskly, lathe bulky headphones affixed to her ears. A suited man lolloped past, dragging his feet as though his destination was anywhere other than where he wanted to be in that moment.

Dan found it amazing. How much of life could be captured from watching a window for ten minutes. How much diversity could be observed in one street. He could have watched them all day, but Phil had given him a mission, and he wasn't going to let Phil down. Heaven forbid. 

His breakfast arrived and was... Large. The size of about five sausage rolls. He was quite intimidated, until he began eating and realised that he really wouldn't have any problems. Human food was good. Really good. Sausages were good, bacon was good, eggs were good, baked beans were good, tomatoes were good, and mushrooms... Not terrible. After that, he could honestly describe himself as a 'Full English.' Well... 'Englishman.' 

Fired up, fuelled up, and ready to take steps to sort out his life as a proper human grown up, he opened the illustrious kitchen door and asked Nora for directions to the local library. 

Not even a good breakfast gave him the courage to ask Julie.

What she told him made his heart sink and his stomach drop. Going to the library would require the use of public transport. This particular quirk of human life had been explained to him on Human Training Day one hundred and one, and sounded... Horrific. Thirty, maybe forty sweaty humans who didn't want to be there cooped up in a rattly metal monster, having to clamber over each other when they reached their destination, and count quick change on the spot. 

He'd do it for Phil, but it was... Terrifying. He thanked Nora in a strained and frightened tone, then nipped back upstairs to get his coat and the coinage he'd gotten from the lethargic worker at the sausage roll shop the day before. 

Right... Time to find a bus. 

Oh god.

***

Human mathematics, he'd grasped very quickly. 

Human literature, less quickly but certainly no great struggle. 

Human social convention, still very much being worked on, but he liked to think he was making headway. 

Human bus timetables... Fucking impossible. 

They were confusing and contradictory and overlapping and he'd been staring at the one at the end of Julie's road for about ten minutes and nothing was making sense. The thought entered his head that maybe they were deliberately crafted that way, as a sort of omen to warn potential passengers against using the buses. He was at that point so intimidated that he was considering using it as an excuse to himself to bolt back to his room and hide under the duvet. But then he remembered his promise to Phil, and that memory coincided with a large purple bus turning the corner. 

He gulped. 

It stopped in front of him, and let out a forbidding hiss as it lowered. Dan watched through the window as the dark haired man being the steering wheel pressed a button and the doors opened, emitting an ominous creak. He dug into his pocket and fisted a handful of coins. The driver certainly wasn't smiling, but he wasn't frowning either. Or at least, Dan didn't think he was beneath his rather hearty moustache. He just looked... Neutral. And very, very bored. Dan swallowed. 

"Hello. Um.. Does this bus... Go near the library?" 

The man grunted an affirmative. "Past it. Stops outside." 

"Great... I'll... There... Please," he paused for a second then affixed, "And back again as well." on the end. 

The man gave him a look that was somewhere between confused and amused, made of hooded eyes and a chin tilted in a condescending manner, then said, "S'three quid for a return." 

"Yeah... That." He pushed three coins towards the man, and was given a bit of paper shaped a bit like an arrowhead. "Thanks." 

The bus lurched into action again before he'd gotten to a seat, and he sort of half-fell into a luckily empty one to his right. He could feel eyes on him, and heard a young voice snigger, then an older, soft 'shushing' sound. He felt his cheeks flush. 

The bus was a rattly thing, that made every bump in the road reverberate through the bones of everyone on it. It smelt like eclectic mix of aftershave, perfume, vomit and pre-vomit food. Remnants of the latter could be seen collecting in every crevice, and smeared on some of the seats in various forms. Dan risked shifting around in his seat to glance at his fellow passengers, and noted that whoever they were, (save for a little boy in a red t-shirt who he assumed had been the one to laugh at him) whatever gender or age - and there was rather a spread between the twenty-five or so people - they were all wearing the exact same face. Blank eyes, flat mouth, sullen cheeks. Not all facial expressions fit into a category or could be translated into words, but Dan reckoned he could have a good go at this one. It's be something like, 'I don't want to be here.' Perhaps that's why humans insisted on using public transport so often. The camaraderie behind it. However divisive things got, morally, politically, socially, everyone could unite behind a feeling of misery on public transport. 

The journey lasted about twenty minutes, with three stops for people to get on and off. Those that got on almost immediately adopted, 'the face' when they did. Then, it shuddered to a halt outside a sky-blue sign for 'Willows Library,' and Dan took his cue to get off. The driver continued staring vacantly forwards when he thanked him and the bus very nearly clipped his backside as it pulled away. Perhaps he wasn't supposed to wander around the front. Maybe it was a niche piece of Earth etiquette that They had omitted from Training. 

Dan went to open the doors, but they opened for him, sliding apart as if by magic. So buses rattled like snakes, but doors opened by themselves. Fair enough. 

The building was full as far as furniture went, just about every square inch of room being utilised. There were bookshelves lining every wall, occasionally broken up by chairs, as well as creating pathways through the middle of the floor. In the middle was a smattering of computers, behind which was a desk staffed by two women. One was older-looking and rather short, with shoulder length brown hair. The other looked younger, and had short blonde hair. She was speaking into a telephone, and squinting as though concentrating hard. 

For people though, the place was relatively sparsely populated. There was one hooded figure hunched over one of the computers, and an old man wearing a flat cap and a serene smile browsing the shelves. 

Dan sidled slowly up to the desk. The older lady smiled at him, looking up at him through her rimless spectacles. 

"Hello, can I help?" She said brightly. 

"Hi... Can I use a computer please?" 

"Do you have your library card, darling?" 

Dan blinked. "Um... No."

"Do you have one at all?" 

"...no." 

"Alright my love," she reached under the desk, and produced a piece of paper marred with lots of lines and boxes, "This is a form to get one, it'll only take a few minutes to fill out, and I'll need to see some ID too." 

ID was an abbreviation for identification, which Dan didn't have any of, because he wasn't a real person. And it had apparently not crossed Their minds that he might possibly need some. 

"I don't have any ID," he said. Then so as not to arise suspicion, he added onto the end, "With me." 

"Oh, well that's a shame," she said, looking rather genuinely disappointed. Dan glanced back to the sparsely populated room, and considered that maybe she'd been rather hopeful of having a new customer. "You'll have to come back with some another time. For now though, you can log onto computer five for thirty minutes without a card, then it'll automatically lock you out. Is that enough?" 

Dan had no idea how long it'd take to find a job site. He knew how to navigate the Internet... There had been a whole four days of Human Training dedicated to it, because the Internet was apparently more important to human culture than... Actual spoken language, or anything frivolous like that. They had been transfixed on the idea that being able to use the Internet like a native would be integral to the success of his excursion. But he'd never had anything like emotional factors, or practicalities to contend with when he was getting his head around online shopping. But he didn't want to cause any hassle to the lady, who seemed so pleasant, so he settled for, "Yes," thanked her, and sat down at the computer with a large number five above it. 

He didn't have much of an idea where to start (other than on Google, the apparent overlord of all human kind) so began with typing 'jobs in London,' into the search bar. There were, according to the first link, one million, four hundred and eight-seven thousand, eight hundred and sixty three jobs available. Well that was nice. He clicked on the link, then wished he hadn't. He became... Somewhat overwhelmed. 

He didn't know what a 'Boots Recruitment Agent' was. He knew what all the words meant individually, of course, but he couldn't make them fit together. What a 'Tesco' was however... No idea whatsoever. Then, he made the mistake of actually selecting one of the jobs, a cleaning job, which he'd been under the impression were the sort of job intended to get you into the world of work. It required a degree (a whole one) and at least four months experience. God. 

With vacant eyes and an increasingly heavy heart, he continued scrolling, until the screen went blank and the computer ceased its whirring noise. 

He sat back in his seat, sighed, and began to hope for a Phil shaped miracle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Round two of guess the TV show in the second paragraph!


	7. Chapter 7

The television was showing something where people who didn't like their houses moved into different houses. On a loop. For four hours. Dan found himself watching it. On a loop. For four hours. 

There was something mesmerising about it. It should, by all accounts have been incredibly boring. Houses were houses, and though houses could be very different, these ones weren't. They were all either 'stylish barn conversions,' or 'sympathetically renovated traditional cottages.' The people clearly weren't accustomed to being on television, and their flat indifference and poor enunciation contrasted starkly with the almost painful optimism and crystalline vowels of the presenters. Additionally, they never actually bought the houses, just 'felt encouraged to continue the search.' 

Yet despite all that... Dan couldn't stop watching. He found himself completely immersed in whether or not Catherine from Rotherham would find a property with a spacious kitchen diner and a paddock for her pony. Whether Ross from Middlesex would be able to find a property with a 'granny annexe,' (which was like a sort of stable in which to house your ageing relatives, apparently. Dan half wondered why they didn't just... Let them in the house) to accommodate his elderly mother. Whether Fiona and Patrick would have to compromise on their fourth bedroom if they wanted an en-suite. 

It was a jarring reminder that humans all had lives of their own. They all had dreams and whims and priorities and they were all tucked away to be discovered. Dan wouldn't have known from looking at Catherine that she had a pony, for example! It just reinforced the fact that humans were enigmas. He wondered what Phil was keeping tucked away for later. And what he'd find to tuck away for himself. 

The immersive powers of the television were such that he didn't even notice as the hand on the clock neared four o clock. In fact, he was just about to learn what Una and Steve's budget was when Phil's knock sounded on the door. Dan jumped, and half scrambled for, his reclined position on the bed into a seated one. 

"Come in!" 

Phil rounded the corner, smiling his large and wonderful smile, "Hey!" 

"Hi," Dan awkwardly signalled towards the television, "Sorry about..." 

Phil looked towards it, then his eyes widened, "Ooh, how rich are they? Oh... Not that rich. It's only interesting when they have more money than they know what to do with." 

Apparently Dan wasn't the only one to fall victim to the immersive powers of the property show.   
Despite saying that it wasn't interesting, Phil's eyes were still fixed to the screen. 

Dan cleared his throat. "I'll.. Um..." He lifted the remote and switched it off. Phil shook his head as though resurfacing from a stint underwater. 

"Sorry. Yeah. Hi! Are you okay." 

Dan sighed, and started fiddling with his sleeve. He was feeling a little guilty about his failed mission at the library. Phil had given him something to do, placed trust in him, and he'd failed. He spoke in a low tone with an ashamed edge. "Yeah... Thanks. I didn't do too well at the library. It was... Confusing. Jobs. Big list... Not much... Help." 

To his relief, Phil nodded sympathetically rather than looking disappointed. "Yeah... I thought that might be the case. Job sites are notoriously rubbish." 

"They are?" 

"God yeah! I think they're trying to confuse you into running away to live in the woods and eat bark or something," Phil frowned at his own words, "That was a weird sentence." 

"...just a bit." 

"But," Phil said, in a tone that Dan certainly hoped he was right in saying was triumphant, holding up his index finger, "Bark scavenging is, I believe, off the cards for you Danny! I may well have found something." 

He produced his phone from his pocket, and began tapping, as Dan's eyes lit up in anticipation. This could be it. His first step to becoming a Proper Human Adult Male. But he wasn't going to get his hopes up yet. 

"Right, it's a few miles away, just on the outskirts of London but not like... Crazily so, if a Londony place to set up camp was what you were going for," Dan was in fact 'going for' a house and not a tent, which was what he understood from the word, 'camp,' but made the assumption that Phil knew this and was using an idiom that he hadn't come across yet, "So what it is... There's this like... Farm thing, where you can go, and they'll pay you to pick fruit. Like... The more fruit you pick, the more money you get. It's not big money, it's not even medium money, but they give you a bed, and two meals a day and... Yeah." 

Phil paused for breath, and showered Dan the phone. There was a banner showing rows of strawberry plants, with "Honeydew Farm," written across it in swirling white letters. Dan felt a smile creep across his face. 

"It sounds-"

"I know it sounds like, really basic and stupid and boring, and it might be, but it wouldn't be for long, and it's the best way I could thing of to keep you warm and fed and-"

"It sounds amazing. Perfect." 

"So, you'll give them a call then? Oh no, wait... No phone. Um..." Phil looked down at his own phone, as though it would give him some wonderful flash of inspiration. And actually, it did apparently, "I've got my old one shoved into a drawer somewhere. I could give you that." 

"You don't need to do that." 

"I want to! Please Dan, let me help you." 

Phil's eyes were so wide and earnest. Dan wondered if he had any idea how much he'd already done. 

"...alright." 

He beamed. God... Phil must not need many lights in his house, he made his own. 

"I'll bring it when I come tomorrow. I'm off work actually, so I could come a bit earlier if you wanted. Like... Eleven? That's about the earliest I'm ever functional." 

Dan smiled, "Sounds good to me." Then he added quickly, "I'll pay you for it, as soon as I know I'll have a place to sleep and eat and stuff," because that's how capitalism was supposed to work.

Phil scoffed, "Yeah, no you won't. Call it a gift. And of course you'll have a place to eat and sleep and stuff. You'll be taking in the cash in no time." He paused and glanced down at his lap, "Dan..?" 

"Yeah?" 

"Can we watch more people buy houses?" 

Dan laughed. 

"Sure."

Una and Steve didn't end up buying a property, but felt encouraged to continue their search. 

***

As Dan lay in bed that night, he found his mind drifting to days 124 and 125 of Human Training. They were dedicated to the topic of 'love.' It had been left to the end, two full days, because love was apparently, to coin a human vernacular, 'The Big One.' 

There are many different types of love. 

There is familial love, which a mother feels for her child, and a child feels for their mother. This is often a very strong form of love, with bonds that ideally last for a lifetime. Stemming from this type of love are often fierce feelings of honour and pride. Historically (or not) this sometimes led to bloodshed. Sometimes, familial love can be complicated, and have associations with obligation and guilt. Sometimes humans who have been hurt by their family feel obliged to forgive because of the blood that binds them. Sometimes this ends well, and is a catalyst for a repaired relationship. Sometimes it doesn't, and is a catalyst for a whole lot more hurt. 

There is sibling love, which is similar to familial love, but slightly different. Sibling love is often a little more complicated, characterised by rivalry and squabbling. Siblings sometimes find themselves competing for the attention of a parent, or for resources within the house, such as snacks or the fabled television remote. Hierarchy and personality can be influenced by birth order, which may aggravate the situation. However, there is often a strong protective instinct between siblings, and they will often go to great lengths to defend each other. 

There is platonic love, which is the love that friends feel for each other. This affection can have varying levels of strength, depending on the level of compatibility, the proximity and the time that the friendship has been developing. Much like sibling love, a protective instinct is often present. However, friendships can sometimes be flimsy. There is no blood bond, so no obligation to reunite if things turn sour. Reflecting on familial love, Dan considered that to be both a blessing and a curse. 

There is love for animals, which may manifest as respect, (for example, that one may feel for a lion or a great blue whale) or as something akin to friendship. Domestic animals can be, for some, a substitute for human companionship. They can possess the qualities of loyalty, friendship and support that are often looked for in a human friendship, without the baggage of grumpiness, irritation and a tendency to get bored tags are often not. 

There is love for 'things.' This could be a child's toy, an overgrown child's car, a television show, ('Keeping Up With The Kardashians,' for example) an item of clothing, or apparently, a soap with an especially pleasant smell. (Dan was learning on the job, as it were. He liked to think of himself as a rather excellent test subject.)

And then there is the really, 'Big One.' Romantic love. 

It is the basis for much of human literature and media. However some of the most popular, for example, 'Romeo and Juliet,' don't present it in the best light. Romantic love can be a tragedy. 

But despite this, as Dan had learnt about it, he'd found himself falling in love with the idea of falling in love. Of another person having the ability to light your veins on fire and consume your every thought. Of having the ability to make someone smile, and to be able to show the world that you're the one that can do that. Of having one person to whom you're completely devoted. 

Just... To be in love. 

He wondered what Phil's thoughts were on the matter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guess the tv show round three!


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, Lovely readers! I'm afraid that updates are going to slow quite significantly after this one... I'm in a show next week that's rather... Not ready, so my mind is likely to be elsewhere, and another a few weeks after that that's equally not ready! Also, exams are fast approaching... GCSE students cry with me! I'm going to aim for in excess of a chapter a week.
> 
> Thanks for sticking this out! As always, comments much appreciated!

"It's an iPhone 4. I thought it was like... The coolest and newest and shiniest thing ever when I bought it - which I guess it was at the time - but now it's... Look!" He sat his own phone, bigger and flatter, beside it on the bed, "It looks like a brick! You could probably like... Literally build a house if you had loads of these. God, I'm not really selling this to you am I?"

Dan chuckled, "It looks great."

Phil hummed, "You're easily pleased. I think it's still all set up and stuff. I had a fiddle last night, and couldn't find anything that didn't work. It makes calls and connects to the internet. Oh, and it's got Temple Run downloaded. What more could you want!" 

Dan didn't know what Temple Run was, but was excited to find out. 

"Thank you... So much."

Phil smiled. "No problem. Now... Let's get you a job." 

He tapped on his own phone for a few seconds to bring up the farm's webpage, then passed it over to Dan. 

Dan opened up his phone's keypad. Then froze. Phil frowned. Dan swallowed thickly.

"...so I just..." 

"Yeah..?"

"Type in the number and press the green button then..."

"Yeah..?"

"Talk?" 

Phil laughed, "That's generally how phone calls go, Dan." 

"Yeah." 

Slowly, Phil's laughter dissipated, and he gave Dan a more concerned look. "Are you scared of phone calls?" 

Well, to be fair Dan didn't actually know if he was or not. They hadn't been able to give him a simulation during Human Training because... Well, there had been nobody to talk to. He was certainly scared of the prospect. So much of this complicated human communication thing was based on facial expressions and nuances in body language, and with those things taken away, there was so much more of a chance of misinterpretation. He could be making someone angry, or sad, and he'd have no way of knowing. 

"...a bit." 

"That's okay, loads of people are. Just... Take a deep breath and go for it. Put it on speaker if you want, so that I'm there too. Just think... This could be a really, really good thing," he smiled encouragingly.

Dan took in a shuddery breath, then nodded. He dialled, then pressed the speaker icon. It rang five times (which inexplicably felt like fifty) then connected. 

"Honeydew Farm?" answered a gravelly voice like rocks in a plastic bottle. Dan felt his throat constrict, but he managed a, "Hi." Phil smiled and nodded.

"Can I help?" 

"Yeah... I... You employ people." 

There was a brief pause. 

"We do." 

"To pick fruit..." 

"We do." 

Dan opened his mouth, but found no sound coming out. There was a faint rustling on the other side, then something that sounded like half a sigh.

"Do I take it that you'd like to be employed to pick fruit?" 

Dan nodded, even though he knew he couldn't be seen. 

"Yes please." 

"You'll be worked hard. You'll get a bed and some food, and it won't be luxury." 

"That's exactly what I want."

"You over sixteen?" 

"Yes. By ten years." (He resisted the automatic reflex to insert the word, 'earth' before 'years.') 

There was more rustling. Dan looked at Phil, who smiled again. He looked a little... Not quite uncomfortable but close. 

"Come down tomorrow then. Ten thirty, have a look round and move in if you don't change your mind." 

"I... Okay." 

"Turn up and ask for Aaron. I'm Aaron." 

"...thank you Aaron. My name is-"

"Thanks for your call." 

The line cut off. 

For a moment, there was silence. Then Phil said, "Well... That was odd." 

Dan took it that maybe that wasn't how human job interviews usually went. 

"...yeah." 

"I'll come with you tomorrow. We'll decide together if it looks in any way... Dodgy." 

"It won't be. You found it." 

Phil laughed, and there was something self deprecating in it. 

"I'm no miracle worker."

"...you're pretty close."

***

Phil had a car. It wasn't a very big car, nor was it a very functional car. It didn't have a working stereo, the left wing mirror was held on by masking tape and one of the back windows wasn't a window, but a bin bag covering a big hole. It made a less than healthy sounding spluttering sound when Phil turned the key, and rattled more than even the bus had the day previously. The worrying noises continued as they drove, but Phil didn't look too concerned. Dan must have, because Phil said, "Don't worry, nothing's fallen off yet. Well... Not since," he gestured vaguely towards the wing mirror, "The tape." 

Dan nodded slowly. 

A few minutes of silence (save for clunky car noises, of course) passed, in which Phil indicated then changed his mind, swerved rather significantly into the middle of the road, and slammed the brakes on when he noticed a pedestrian crossing a moment too late. Dan guessed that 'The Highway Code,' which he had been subjected to on Human Training Day 105 wasn't a constant presence in Phil's life. 

During the journey, Dan discovered something about himself, thanks to the imminent danger his life seemed to be in due to Phil's creativity with the ways of the road. Humans have a variety of reactions to fear. Some internalise it. Some express it through body language. Some vocalise it. He was the third. He found himself squeaking and squealing and squawking and swearing all in a rather undignified cocktail of terror. Phil seemed to find it rather funny.

"Don't worry, I did pass my test. Eventually. Maybe I shouldn't have. They should have just given me a black card that says, 'never drive.'" 

"...maybe." 

Phil laughed. "Can you drive then?" 

Dan wondered if this was a genuine inquiry, or an attempted distraction from the driving. "I know how to," he said truthfully - the Highway Code - "But I don't have a car." Equally true.

"Can't say I'm sure that berry picking money will stretch that far... But you never know." 

"I'm going to climb the employment ladder," Dan said confidently, still holding onto a small shred of optimism that the principles They had taught him could be practically applied. 

"Yeah! That's the spirit! You'll be Chief Executive of Raspberries in no time!"

"...I'd be inclined to say that's not a real position." 

Phil laughed. 

***

Honeydew Farm was tucked away behind some dense trees, right on the outskirts of London. Its presence was boasted by a rustic, hand painted sign with black and purple lettering. Phil's tin-can of a car shuddered its way up a gravel path and through some wooden gates. Dan leaned forward to glance around Phil's head at the land beyond. 

He could see rows and rows of bushy plants, militarily arranged in neat lines, all with little bursts of colour on them. If all went well, and nothing was 'dodgy,' as Phil had put it, that'd be where he'd be spending his days. He withheld judgement for a while. Beyond that, in the distance, he could see flat fields with lethargically moving animals dotted around them. Cows, he guessed. He hoped he'd get to meet one. He quite liked the idea of cows when he'd learnt about them. In all of the areas, scattered around were people. Some picking fruit, some carrying buckets, an odd couple with their arms full of bedding or laundry. 

The buildings were to their left. They all looked as though they were made of wood, and had a cabin like exterior, even the one at the end of the row which advertised itself as the 'office,' with another hand painted sign that hung above the door. There were two pot plants either side of the door, and they weren't sunflowers. Dan chose to take that as a good sign. (Though, they weren't roses either.) It wasn't clear what purpose the other buildings served. They all looked the same, though at a guess, there had to be a laundry room, a kitchen, and something serving as a bathroom. Dan hoped. 

After switching off the engine (and a noise that sounded a bit like stone dropping) Phil say back in his seat and smiled at Dan. "Looks nice so far. Nothing... Murdery yet." 

"No. Nothing murdery. Though... If there were anything murdery, I'd say they'd hardly be advertising it," Dan commented, then regretted it when he remembered his optimism. 

"Good point." He clapped his hands together, "Right... Let's go see what this is all about then." 

Dan nodded, and opened the door. It took a bit of a shove - it was a bit sticky - but it cooperated eventually. Dan thought that there could be some metaphor drawn about humanity. Julie's smiling face that had eventually softened sprang to mind. He took the shopping bag containing all of his possessions (clothes, Phil's old phone, three bars of rose scented soap and a hundred and twenty-two pounds) from the back seat, then began to make his way to the office, Phil leading the way. 

Dan well and truly had the walking thing under control by this point, but he'd never walked on gravel before. It was something he hadn't considered - that even the floors had variety on this planet so insistent on having a hundred and one options for just about everything. It felt all funny underfoot, and was accompanied by a crunchy noise. He didn't think he liked it. It crossed his mind that his reactions to everything were being heightened by his nervousness about what was about to happen and was struck by what a human reaction that was. He was very proud of his own subconscious. 

Phil stood to the side of the door, and gestured with an encouraging smile for Dan to go in first. He did, and felt the shift from gravel to laminate. Yes. Laminate was nicer. 

The office, (which actually should probably be put in inverted commas, because it couldn't quite be described as an office) was basic, to say the least. There was a desk, with beige coloured computer that looked like it could feasibly have been heavier than Dan, and had dust set into the speakers so deep that they probably couldn't do much speaking. Next to it, a phone that Dan hadn't seen anything like before, and had buttons, which probably meant that it was old. There were a few pens scattered haphazardly across the keyboard, and a leather bound book with dog-eared papers constraining incomprehensible scribbles. There was a black swivel chair, that looked as though it had seen better days. Behind the desk was a single metal door. 

There was a notable absence from the 'office' - Anyone manning the desk. Phil wandered towards the door. "Hello?" 

He waited a few seconds, then tried again. 

"Um... Hi? Anyone there?" 

He heard distant voices, so stepped back from the door, back over to where Dan was nervously bouncing from foot to foot. 

The door swung open, to reveal a... Large man. At least six foot five, and nearly as broad. His t-shirt appeared to be struggling to contain his muscles. His black hair was cut close to his scalp, and his eyes were large and dark. He scanned the office quickly before his eyes landed on Dan and Phil. 

"You the new recruits?" His voice sounded like caramel running over hot rocks. It filled the room in a mesmerising way. 

Phil blinked, then pointed to Dan with his thumb. 

"He is... Maybe. I'm just..."

The man raised his eyebrows. "...supervision?" 

"Yeah. Something like that." 

"Right." He deposited himself into the chair. It seemed to creak in fear, "I'm Aaron." 

"I spoke to you on the phone," Dan said, wide eyed and rather comfortable with his newly found human mechanism of stating the obvious when afraid. 

Aaron flicked his eyes condescendingly from Dan to Phil, "Bright, this one." 

"I... Yeah," Phil stuttered out. 

"Yeah," Aaron repeated, a tinge of amusement in his voice. Then, his face dropped into something more serious, "Right... What you need to know about this place. We're a step-ladder, yeah? We're not a hotel, the food's basic, the money's minimal, but it builds up. We know we're a last resort kind of place, but we're not hell, and we want you to get out. So you'll be here for a while, and we won't ask any questions, then if you're lucky, you'll leave and never come back. And in my experience, you kinda make your own luck. So... Work hard, and there's every chance you'll be out of here." 

Dan was sure this wasn't how the world worked. It was all too simple, in a world that wasn't. But he nodded. 

"Not scared off yet?" 

Dan shook his head. "No. Not at all." 

"Cool. I'll show you around, then you can either do a runner, or pick a bed."


End file.
